Author
Topic: NO2ID Newsletter No 162 (Read 999 times)

+ WE DISAGREE WITH NICK +The Deputy Prime Minister has proposed [1] that from 2014 all voters will have to register themselves, providing "signature, national insurance number and date of birth", converting the current electoral roll into a centralised population register little different in principle to the ID scheme database. (Mr Clegg omits to mention name and address - who knows what other personal information may be required.)

Systemic abuse of the existing electoral roll already discourages registration and facilitates fraud; sucking up even more personal information can only make this worse. And what other purposes will be found for the new system? History has shown how such bureaucratically-driven registers, and their uses and abuses, only expand over time.

Just as worrying are the 'cross-matching' powers to be given to local authorities to track down the unregistered. With echoes of Clause 152 - the Ministry of Justice's blatant attempt to "overcome the barriers to information sharing across the public sector" which NO2ID helped defeat in 2009 [2] - these new powers would overturn the fundamental data protection principle that information gathered for one purpose may not be used for another without consent.

Individual voter registration does not require a centralised database, any more than ID ever did. The government should be reining in mass data-snooping, not extending and encouraging it. And, given that voting is voluntary, why should councils spend money chasing people onto the electoral roll who don't want to be there? Will forcing people to register make them more or less likely to vote?

There's still time to get the government to reconsider its approach, but we need to act NOW.

Please write to your MP - you can do this at http://www.WriteToThem.com - and ask them to oppose councils' use of their constituents' personal data without their consent, and the creation of yet another centralised population register.

+ Identity Documents Bill - House of Lords Report Stage +On Wednesday (17th November) the Identity Documents Bill (the bill to repeal the Identity Cards Act 2006) completed its Report Stage in the House of Lords. Most of the two hour debate was taken up discussing whether ID card holders should be offered a Â£30 refund. Home Office Minister Baroness Neville-Jones said: "A refund scheme would add 10 per cent to that cost, which we do not consider to be a trivial addition." But many Lords felt that particularly young and old people that bought a card would suffer. To this Baroness Neville-Jones said: "We should not exaggerate the significance of all this. Much has been made of the elderly and the very young. We have no reliable demographic information at all on who the purchasers were." This seems a little odd, since one would imagine that the one thing an Identity Card system would have is detailed information about those people who were issued cards and that date of birth would have been stored. Perhaps this was an admission that ID cards are useless. Eventually peers decided to vote on an amendment to offer refunds which was passed by 220 in favour to 188 against. All further proposed amendments to the bill were not moved or withdrawn, so the bill will move to 3rd Reading with just the one amendment. None of the problems with the bill highlighted by NO2ID and others were addressed. A special mention goes to Labour peer Lord Maxton who, completely casting aside the views of the people, was at great pains toclaim the inevitability of ID cards, he said: "A friend of mine described the Bill as the King Canute Bill; in other words, it is doing away with something - identity cards - which, in a relatively short time, whatever Government are in power, will have to be reintroduced. That is almost inevitable." Watch the debate (32m 49 secs in) at:http://www.parliamentlive.tv/Main/Player.aspx?meetingId=6956Read the debate transcript at: http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld201011/ldhansrd/text/101117-0001.htm#10111743000857NO2ID's Commons 2nd Reading briefing is at:http://www.no2id.net/IDSchemes/2010-06-08-identity-documents-bill-briefing.pdf

+ Summary Care Records Statistics published +The Connecting for Health website has published statistics relating to the controversial NHS Summary Care Records (SCRs). The new government pledged to scrap the SCR but has since broken that pledge and is continuing the SCR roll-out. According to the website 3,528,914 SCRs have been created (double the number since the government launched itsreviews in June), the number of patients who have received a letter explaining the SCR through a Public Information Programme is 29,803,669 and the percentage of patients that have opted out from having an SCR created is 1.13%, with the caveat that "opt out figure reported only for those practices that have submitted data on opt out figures".See http://www.connectingforhealth.nhs.uk/systemsandservices/scr/staff/aboutscr/benefits/scrkeyLink to NO2ID's opt-out form: http://www.no2id.net/downloads/SCR_optout_sheet.pdf

+ School fingerprinting concerns +Action on Rights for Children (ARCH) has published its response to government proposals on the use of pupils' fingerprints in schools. The document states: "We welcome the fact that the Department intends to require the consent of both parent and child before any fingerprint can be taken by a school. We believe that dual consent is the right approach, and should like to see it used far more widely where children's data is involved." ARCH goes on to highlight several areas of concern such as "that parents and children have the right to withdraw consent at any time to the ongoing retention of biometric data" and that consent should be informed consent. ARCH has also published a report on Schools and the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act, which was sent to the Information Commissioner's Office. When ARCH asked schools for information under FOI in 2007 they got just a 12% response rate and when they repeated the exercise in 2008, the response rate was still only 25%. Seehttp://www.archrights.org.uk/index.php?option=com_phocadownload&view=category&download=18:p-p-2010&id=6&Itemid=23and http://www.archrights.org.uk/index.php?option=com_phocadownload&view=category&download=17&id=6&Itemid=23------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------What's next?

*+ Poster Competition +*When campaigning against ID cards many groups made their own posters to help get the message across. We thought it would be a good idea for groups and supporters to get together to design and test their own posters for use in the next phase of our campaign. You can then submit your poster design to us and we will print the best ones and publish them on the website.

Please contact James Baker on local.groups@no2id.net or 07817 605162 to request a design brief pack which contains details on how to enter.

+ NOTICE - Pledgebank +*In late 2005, when the ID Cards Bill was being pushed through Parliament, over 11,000 people signed NO2ID's pledge to refuse to register for an ID card and to donate Â£10 to a legal defence fund to assist those who challenged the Scheme. When we called in the pledge in November 2007 thousands of people donated and the money has been held ina dedicated bank account, untouched.

The Coalition is now scrapping ID cards and the National Identity Register, and the Identity Cards Act 2006 will soon be repealed. The compulsion to register was never imposed and has ceased to be a likelihood for the foreseeable future, but the bureaucratic obsession with ID, mass surveillance and information trafficking goes on.

We therefore give notice that NO2ID intends to cease to hold a separate legal defence fund when the Identity Documents Bill, the repealing legislation, has passed both Houses, and to apply the funds to the general purposes of the campaign against the database state.

Much was given anonymously. The administrative cost of identifying and tracing everyone who gave by name could easily exceed the amount given. But we will respect your wishes if you were only against ID cards and do not want your donation used in our future fight against the database state. If you gave and would like your pledge returned write to NO2ID PLEDGEBANK, Box 412, 19-21 Crawford Street, London W1H 1PJ with evidence of your donation.

If you would like to help our continuing campaign to:* STOP all unnecessary collection by government of personal information about law-abiding residents of the United Kingdom;* STOP sharing of personal information between government bodies, or its use for new purposes, without the genuine, informed consent of the persons concerned or a specific warrant from a court;* BUILD positive protections in law for individual privacy; and* CREATE a right to compensation for unauthorised use of personal information;

*+ November - Database State talks, London + *Former Hammersmith local coordinator Brian Mooney has organised some autumn talks on aspects of the database state - see the local groups section below.------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------"ID" in the news

*+ Government suffers Lords defeat over ID card refunds - BBC News 17/11/10 +*The government has been defeated in the Lords over its refusal to offer people who bought ID cards a refund. Ministers are legislating to scrap ID cards but 12,000 people had already bought one, at a cost of Â£30 each. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-11781783

*+ SCR patient campaign set to restart - eHealth Insider 16/11/10 +*Public Information Programmes for the Summary Care Record are to restart before Christmas following a five month suspension. The Department of Health has told EHI Primary Care that a small number of PIPs will be launched before Christmas and that PIPs will restart in full in the New Year.http://www.e-health-insider.com/news/6423/scr_patient_campaign_set_to_restart

*+ How ID card database will be destroyed - BBC News 10/11/10 +*Identity cards may be history for British citizens - but what about all the personal details collected by the government and stored on its national identity database?http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-11719764

To see if there's a group in your area check our list at http://www.no2id.net/localgroups/Or, if you're interested in starting a group yourself, please contact James on local.groups@no2id.net to discuss what's involved and what we have in place to support coordinators and their groups.

*+ NO2ID goes on tour with Erasing David +*Groups across the country are helping to facilitate a nationwide tour of Erasing David -- a documentary about privacy, surveillance and the database state. Phil Booth, our national co-ordinator is hitting the road with David Bond the film maker and producer Ashley Jones to help raise awareness of the victims of the Database State that lie behind theheadlines of privacy abuses. Tour Locations:Manchester - to be confirmedGlasgow - to be confirmed

_*+ Cambridge +*_The Cambridge group is planning a celebration after the bill abolishing the ID Cards scheme is actually passed. This now seems likely to be on either Friday 4th February or Friday 11th February. Watch this space for details...

_*+ Camden & Islington +*_** CHANGE OF VENUE* **+ 7th December -- Camden & Islington NO2ID Meeting +*1st Tuesday of the month. 8.00pm at *The Kings Head, 59 Essex Rd, Islington. All welcome. *Last month The Kings Head was closed; if it is again then we will be in The New Rose which is at 84-86 Essex Road - very slightly further up (away from Angel) on the opposite side of the road.

+ Saturdays 1pm - 3pm - Edinburgh **NO2ID**Street Stall +*Every week, weather permitting, you will find our campaigning stall at the east end of Princes Street, opposite the Balmoral Hotel. Do drop by for a chat. New volunteers - please contact John (edinburgh@no2id.net), and for more group information see http://www.no2id-scotland.net/edinburgh/

_*+ Leeds +*_*+ Leeds NO2ID Christmas Stall and Drinks +*Leeds NO2ID will be meeting outside Leeds Museum by the Christmas market to hold a street stall for a couple of hours on the 11th of December. After the stall we will be heading off around 2pm for our annual Christmas drinks in Mr Foley's cask ale house. All new faces welcome.

_*+ London +*_*+ Database State talks - London + *Former Hammersmith local coordinator Brian Mooney has organised some autumn talks on aspects of the database state. More info: 020 7385 9757 / brian@newalliance.org.uk

The new government promised to respect civil liberties, but still proposes to keep masses of personal data on people who are innocent of any crime. This is particularly true of the national DNA database, but many parents are unaware of, for example, plans to extend fingerprinting in schools or the amount of data that has been kept on children and young people. Come and hear some top speakers who will shed light on the issues.